The general Trek goofs and/or mistakes topic

Post goofs you've found about anything Trek and see if other members can clear them up or even noticed them at all. I noticed a topic about one series, but I couldn't find a general Trek topic, so I made one.


I was watching the clusterfuck that is Generations the other day, and while I won't defend it's a good movie, I actually noticed some very minor goofs that you can overlook in favor of the far more serious ones in that story.

Curiously too, I think these same issues were in another film before it. It was either V or VI, but it involves some language.

In Generations, Kirk says "At least, I thought this was my house. I sold it years ago"

And one of those past movies, Scotty says something akin to "I hope so, I just bought a boat."

Uh... didn't they state in IV, and it carried over to Next Gen, that money was done away with in Star Trek? Are these just general verbiage to convey the same point, or did they forget?

It took many watches on my end to even notice the tiny ones like this.


What do you think, post your own, post other examples you noticed and let's make a topic.

 

Do Tellarites have 4 or 5 digits per hand? http://www.ex-astris-scientia.org/inconsistencies/changing-faces1.htm#tellarites

On the first appearance of Tellarites in "Journey to Babel" Ambassador Gav and his unnamed aide are characterized by their recessed eyes and furry claws with three fingers. ... The alien in "The Lights of Zetar", on the other hand, has five fingers instead of the claw...

The Tellarite in ENT had 5 digits.

I can't remember from DISCO

 

Mutant Tellarites? Parallel evolution?

 

I feel the buying/selling might just be a figure of speech for them, like we have so many archaic phrases? Like I might say "I'll shoot you an email" but I don't mean I'm going to use a gun or anything.

I never can understand how photon torpedoes are supposed to work. In episodes like "The Nth Degree" they say that even with their full shields if the torpedo goes off too near the Enterprise it'll destroy the ship, but then in some episodes or movies the ship is hit with a torpedo directly and no shields and it's just minor damage.

 

You know you could've answered to just clear it up instead.

It doesn't seem like a very efficient figure of speech; to me it seems the script forgot some of the minute details needed for a world so different from our own. People wouldn't talk the same. It's no big deal, as I stated, it takes multiple times to even notice it, but it does stick out.

 

The future and its evolved sensibilities.

Spoiler: Money, get back

Oh look! Somebody in the world has written (a lot) about this:

As Marie Picard said, "This is a very old argument," and consequently, I feel thus:

 

Are you going to make one for Discovery (and, I guess, Beyond), or is that too dangerous these days with all the copyright strikes? I always loved those videos, and explaining half of them silently to myself.

 

The Federation did away with currency but they did not forbid possession of foreign currency.

I've mentioned a few times in the Voyager threads cases where they seem to forget that the Maquis crew were *ever* not Starfleet.

 

I like Trek, but I'm not super well versed on little details like this. I haven't seen or read absolutely everything.

The fact it was brought up is cool though; it means it's not a mistake. It was addressed.

Thank you for clearing it up; that was the point of this topic: 'bring up supposed goofs and have others explain and/or correct them'

 

When Kirk says they're still using money in the 20th century in STIV, he means that they're still using paper currency. They obviously don't have that in the 23rd century (they use credits), but it's easier to just say they don't use money.

By TNG, the Federation has supposedly evolved to a completely moneyless society, but that's not true in the 23rd. There's one episode of TOS ("The Apple," IIRC) where Kirk tells Scotty that he's earned his salary for the week.

 

I'm not working on it just yet, but I do plan to do one more episode, which will be at least half about Discovery.

 

How many hours they've invested in him. That works out to about 13.949 years.

When people say "buy", they mean "acquire".

You still need units to measure a person's affluence/influence ratio.

Different populations develop differently based on who's in them.

 

That’s a clever, but strained reading of the line:

Do you know how much years Starfleet has invested in you?​

You might well be right, but much + invested has always equaled money in my book.

 

When Jaglom Shreck is introduced in Birthright, he has no thumbs. The next time we see a member of his species, that one has thumbs. The next time after that, when Jaglom Shreck returns, he again has no thumbs.

The problem being that Jaglom Shreck is the one that represents how his species looks. None of his people are supposed to have thumbs. It can't even be explained as Jaglom Shreck's thumbs were removed, as there is no evidence of that. He just doesn't have any.

My main problem with this is that is that a species that is able to develop technology has the ability to manipulate it. Not having opposable thumbs makes that difficult at best. Heinlein even stated in his novel "The Star Beast" that species without opposable thumbs were not considered sentient because they couldn't develop technology (I know that isn't Star Trek), which on the face of it makes sense.

 

I can't find it, but in one of the TNG Cpation This! contests in the last year or so there was one of Worf walking through engineering and you can see a black cord for some kind of stupid equipment running along the bottom of the wall.

And in one or two other TNG Cpation This! contests I noted pictures from earlier seasons (like the first or second) where I guess nobody was paying attention and the computers inside the Ops stations behind Yar are hanging open.


This guy on Youtube has put together some fun continuity errors in multiple videos:

(youtube.com/watch?v=gFq-37a7pk0)

 

How much time

 

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